Stones of Flame
by Kryschenn
Summary: A crazed cult desperately seeks an idol that has been lost for generations, but the Young Ones find it first. One tiny decision means the difference between the kids destroying the idol and the cult unleashing an ancient evil.
1. Discovery

**Disclaimer: **I hold these truths to be self-evident, that 1.) I do not own Dungeons and Dragons, the Cartoon, that 2.) I own no part of the estate of H.P. Lovecraft, that 3.) this was written by a fan for simple enjoyment, that 4.) I make no profit from this story, and that 5.) I would greatly appreciate not being sued over it, thankyouverymuch.

**Author's Note: **You need not have read any of the works of H.P. Lovecraft to understand this, but it might help to know that he was an American author from Providence, Rhode Island, who wrote groundbreaking fantasy and supernatural horror in the early part of the 20th Century.

**Dedication: **This is a slightly late birthday present for my friend Robert. At the same time, a special thank-you goes to my friend and co-worker John, who must take full responsibility for insinuating Lovecraft into my brain like this. _Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn_!

O.O.O

**Stones of Flame**

Chapter 1: Discovery

O.O.O

"_Watch out!_"

It all happened too fast. Presto wasn't even sure which of his friends had shouted the warning. It was timely enough to allow him to pull back from his attacker's cudgel, preventing the crude weapon from connecting disastrously with his head, but he could not dodge the blow completely. Instinctively, he'd thrown up his arm to shield himself, so, instead of dashing his brains out, the metal club impacted his shoulder with a sickening crunch. The force of the blow was enough to stagger the Magician back several steps.

Unfortunately, he did not have several steps worth of solid ground to stagger. He'd been standing near the low bank of a clear lake, taking an afternoon break from endless miles of marching, when the group of aggressive humans had abruptly descended upon them.

Their attackers had not been dressed for stealth in the woods; yet no one had heard them coming, and certainly, no one knew who the hairy men dressed in red scale armor were. The only warning the kids had of their approach was a sudden start and frightened bleat from Uni, who likely had scented this decidedly smelly group. Then chaos erupted, and the entire focus of Presto's world suddenly narrowed to the explosive agony in his shoulder.

Falling back awkwardly, Presto lost his footing, spun his arms in a lopsided but frantic windmill, and unceremoniously fell three feet into the shockingly cold water of the lake.

One of the girls screamed his name; again, he wasn't sure which. But, knowing he'd been about to fall into the water, Presto had bought himself a minute by drawing a deep breath just before he'd plunged in. He wasn't the strongest swimmer, but under normal circumstances, even with one desperately aching and possibly broken arm, he should have been able to get his head above water. What he hadn't counted on was the billowing length of his robes. As he floundered about, trying to right himself, he felt the heavy fabric tangling dangerously around his legs.

_Crap, I've got to get out of here,_ the Magician thought, in a near-panic as he pulled frantically at the material trapping his ankles. Though his lungs were already beginning to burn, strangely enough, it was not the fear of drowning that worried Presto. All he could think about was getting to the surface so he could help defend his friends in this sudden battle.

As hard as he struggled to free himself, Presto only felt his feet getting bound further. Abruptly, his hand closed on what felt like a submerged branch, and he realized with a thrill of panic that his robes were not only tangled, but firmly snagged. Faced with the real possibility of drowning, the Magician inexplicably felt a sense of complete fury rather than fear.

_Stupid branch, stupid lake, stupid ambush, stupid Venger, stupid Realm, stupid STUPID EVERYTHING! _Presto thought angrily, assigning blame for his dangerous circumstances randomly and, quite possibly, undeservedly. Grasping the branch in both hands, he gave it a sharp twist. The last of the air in his lungs bubbled out of his mouth with the exertion, and he still wasn't free.

Do or die, then. Marshaling every last bit of his strength and a great deal of uncharacteristic fury at the attacker who had put him in this situation, Presto gave one final twist to the submerged branch, and felt it giving way with a waterlogged snap. Having been caught less than a foot underwater, Presto instantly shot to the surface gasping.

Two deep breaths and a round of coughing later, the Magician was recovered enough to realize three disturbing things: One, that he'd lost his glasses in the lake. Two, that he'd also lost his Hat. And three, that the battle was still raging, and though his friends were fighting fiercely, they were simply outnumbered. Unless they broke their cardinal rule of never using lethal force with their Weapons, they were going to be overwhelmed in a matter of moments.

Blinking rapidly, trying to focus through the baby-oil haze that was his uncorrected vision, Presto was fairly certain he saw a small, green smudge floating just a few yards away. Hoping that it was his Hat and not a clump of duckweed, Presto flailed quickly towards it, and was rewarded by the feel of heavy, wet fabric between his grasping fingers.

"However you do it, I don't care! Hat, get our enemies out of here!" Presto shouted furiously to his soggy Weapon.

Presto's lungs were still aching. His throat still burned. The rhyme had stunk. Altogether, the words never stood the chance of sounding quite right, so, naturally, the Hat followed the mispronunciation to the letter. The shouts and clashes of battle instantly became the screams and rushing of pure panic as the red-mailed attackers howled and beat at their suddenly flaming heads.

Heaving a raspy sigh, Presto watched the blurry, burning men run in painful, blind disarray, disappearing into the woods they had emerged from. Then, the Magician glanced wryly at the Weapon still dripping in his hands. "I said get them out of _here_, not get them out of _hair_," he explained wearily to the Hat.

"Hey, Presto, care to join us where it's a little less damp?" Diana's voice called, and Presto looked up to see three vaguely human-shaped blurs standing on the bank of the lake. One blur was mostly green, the next was a darker brown, and the third was a riot of bright, primary colors, so the glasses-deprived Wizard was fairly certain he was looking at Hank, Diana, and Eric.

"Well, if you insist," Presto answered raspily, awkwardly dogpaddling his way towards the shore and quietly cursing his billowing robes for the third time in as many minutes. "So, the bad guys are, like, gone?"

"Sheila's following them for a little bit to be sure," the green blur that was Hank answered, with a familiar movement of his head that Presto did not need his glasses to recognize as a concerned glance in the invisible Thief's last known direction. "But you did a pretty good number on them. They didn't look like they'd be in any shape to come back and give us trouble any time soon."

When he had floundered close enough to the bank, blur-Hank and blur-Diana knelt down and each grasped one of the Magician's hands. "Okay, on three," Diana instructed. "One, two, three!" When his two friends gave a coordinated pull, Presto did his best to assist by climbing the rocky, nearly vertical bank with his feet. Halfway up, he felt Eric grab the sash around his waist to lend an extra hand, and the next thing Presto knew, he was sprawled face-first in a bedraggled heap with his friends kneeling around him in concern.

Suddenly realizing just how tired he was after his brief ordeal, the Magician decided it would be really nice to just lie there for a minute or two and recover. He managed to roll over onto his back, closing his eyes against the fuzzy brightness of the suns as he did so, and found enough energy to cough a few times.

"Hey, buddy... you okay?" he heard Eric's voice ask as someone shook his shoulder. Presto was very, very thankful that it was his uninjured shoulder.

"Yeah, I... I guess," The Magician said slowly. Now that he was safe, he found himself realizing just how much an unexpected plunge into a cold lake could make a person hurt. His head throbbed and his chest ached like someone was sitting on it. Breathing wasn't quite as easy as it should have been; he might have inhaled some water after all. And that wasn't even including the injury to his arm. Truthfully, it had all happened so fast that Presto still wasn't sure how everything had transpired. "So ... uh ..." he asked through another bout of coughing, "what happened just now?"

"Well, you scared us pretty bad there for a second," Hank explained when Presto trailed off with a weary sigh. "We thought you were going to drown, and nobody could get away from those guys long enough to help you. Good thing you got to the surface and set their hair on fire like that."

"Yeah, I, uh, maybe I kinda feel kinda bad about that," Presto apologized, wondering just how much damage his slip of the tongue had done to their opponents. "I coulda killed somebody. I mean, that was kinda close to deadly force, wasn't it?"

"Well, desperate times, desperate measures," the Ranger answered, a nonchalant shrug carrying in the tone of his voice. Obviously, their leader wasn't too upset about the underhanded tactic, which, in itself, didn't come as much of a surprise any more. Though they knew of no one who had died as a direct consequence of their actions (the end result of their encounter with Lolth still being in question), Presto had noticed some time ago that the group's aversion to possibly killing someone was beginning to pale in comparison to their simple need for survival.

"'Sides, think about it this way," Eric volunteered cheerfully. "You did those guys a big favor by curing any head lice problems they had."

Presto tried to smile at Eric's snarky irreverence, but he only managed a ghost of the intended expression. His hand drifted up to rub the bridge of his nose gingerly as he asked, "Any idea who those guys were?"

"None at all," Eric answered, sounding more concerned than chipper this time. "And I'm gonna say it again, are you okay, buddy?"

"Um, no, not really," Presto answered. Swallowing down the spiral of panic that had been coiling in the back of his throat, the Magician finally opened his eyes and pointed out the obvious, which none of his friends had realized in the midst of their greater concerns. "I, uh ... I kinda lost my glasses in the lake."

"Wha - ? Oh, yeah, I guess you did," Eric replied lamely.

"Don't worry about it, I can find them, no sweat," Diana volunteered immediately. "The water's maybe only a couple yards deep, and it looks like the bottom's more rock than mud." Climbing quickly to her feet, she added, "They can't have gone too far," before lightly springing into the water and slipping easily beneath the surface.

Presto sighed, drawing his knees up to his chest as he sat up, accepting his friends' assurances that Diana would be back with his glasses any moment. Eric knew – they all knew, in fact – just how afraid he was of losing his glasses, but he doubted any of them really understood just why it terrified him so much. They'd never experienced the complete and utter helplessness of not being able to see more than a foot beyond their own noses, to not be able to tell who or what was right in front of you or right beside you. Back home, his severe astigmatism was a frightening inconvenience that could thankfully be cured by a trip to the Optometrist. Here, in the Realm, it was a matter of life and death. If he couldn't see, if he couldn't tell when a bloodthirsty enemy was pursuing him or if he was about to stumble into a deathtrap, then being without his glasses greatly reduced his chances of living another week. The very best he could hope for was to be relegated to the status of a near-blind charity case that some village supported out of pity. Presto's terror at the thought began to gain momentum.

"So, Eric, did those guys say anything to you that might give us a clue what that was all about?" the near-panicked Magician vaguely heard Hank ask over his head.

"Not that I could make heads or tails of," Eric replied. "One guy yelled at me that 'the road ghoul won't answer to you,' whatever that means. You?"

"One of them said that we should give up the search," Hank answered. "He didn't say much more because I was pounding his face into the ground at the time."

"Yeah, remind me one of these days to ask you why you went out for football and not wrestling," Eric commented wryly. "How 'bout you, Presto? That guy that hit you say anything?"

Presto just gave a one-shouldered shrug, trying to focus on the conversation and not allow himself get too worried just yet. Diana would find his glasses, she just had to. "Um, he said, 'DIIIIEEE!' That's about it," he answered. For a moment, the Magician perked up, catching fuzzy sight of what he thought was the Acrobat breaking the surface of the lake. But she must have just come up for air; his hopes deflated when she merely bobbed for a few seconds before slipping into the water again, empty-handed.

"Well, at least that guy was pretty clear on what he wanted," Eric said lightly, trying to humor his forlorn friend. The attempt was obviously lost on Presto, who only grunted half-heartedly.

This was followed by an awkward pause between the three of them.

"Hey, Bobby?" Hank called before the silence got too uncomfortable. "Any sign of them coming back?"

"Nope. At least, Uni doesn't think so," the little Barbarian answered from closer to the tree line. Presto idly noted that the kid actually sounded disappointed that he wasn't going to get to bust any heads today. "Ya want me to go after them or something?"

"Bobby! Don't you dare!" interrupted a familiar, feminine voice, scolding Bobby while reassuring everyone else that Sheila had returned safely from her invisible tracking foray. "Besides, you'd never catch up to them. They got on their horses and rode off while I was watching. But that doesn't mean we're safe, so don't go wandering off, do you hear me? We need to stay together to make sure they don't take us by surprise again."

"Yeah, sure, whatever, Sis," Bobby answered, clearly sounding more confident in his ability to smash the bad guys than the rest of them were.

"I mean it. You stay right there and keep watch," Sheila ordered. "I need to go see how Presto is."

Sheila knew more about first aid than the rest of the group, so, coupling that with her tendency to fuss over everyone like a mother hen, Presto had been expecting this. In fact, a long time ago, he'd just given up and quietly accepted that she'd essentially adopted him as a second little brother to care for. Actually, the sentiment was kind of nice. But that didn't mean he was thrilled with the concept of her poking and prodding his very painful arm to determine if it was broken.

"Okay, it was pretty crazy for a minute there," a pastel blur that was Sheila said gently, coming to kneel beside the dripping and glum Presto. "I couldn't see everything that happened, but it looked like that guy knocked you into the lake. Where did he hit you?"

"Arm," Presto answered, wincing painfully, but dutifully holding out his left arm for inspection. There was no point to insisting that he was fine; he didn't even need to see clearly to know that Sheila was wearing that mulish look which said she wasn't going to accept a show of bravado as an answer. "Just below my shoulder. Hurts like the dickens."

"I'll bet it does," Sheila answered, poking and prodding just like Presto had expected. "But you can move it, that's something. All right, can you wiggle your fingers?"

"How 'bout he makes a fist instead?" Eric quickly and only half-jokingly suggested. "You never know what a random finger-twiddle will get from our pal the Wizard."

Making a face in Eric's direction, Presto very deliberately wiggled his fingers as Sheila had asked. His best friend could be a bit of an insensitive boob sometimes, and the magic-gone-awry jokes got old after a while. All the same, the accident-prone Wizard was secretly relieved that the gesture didn't end up causing a spectacular scene of magical mayhem after all.

"Well, I don't think it's broken," the Thief assessed after a moment. "But I'm pretty sure you're going to have a nasty bruise, at the very least. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to get it in a sling for a few days ..."

"Hey, guys!" Diana's excited voice interrupted as she splashed to the surface of the lake again. "You've got to see this!"

Presto brightened instantly. "Did you find my glasses?" he called hopefully.

"Yeah, and something else," the Acrobat answered, kicking herself easily through the water. When she reached the edge, she hauled herself nimbly up to the bank without any of the assistance that the waterlogged Wizard had required. "Here," she said immediately, handing Presto his precious eyewear. "And take a look at this!"

Presto could see that Diana was holding up something glittery red, about the size of a football. What it was, though, he could not make out, even after he put his glasses on. Muttering darkly, he pulled the streaked lenses off his face and tried to wipe them on his robe, only to remember that his clothing was as soaked as his glasses. With a frustrated sigh, he grabbed the corner of Eric's cape and started drying. The Cavalier didn't even seem to notice as he stared at Diana's mystery object, making sounds of awe along with the others.

Cleaned and dried glasses back in place, Presto finally took a good look at what the Acrobat displayed, and gasped in wonder with the rest of them. It was a statue of a dragon, wings outstretched, frozen in an eternal pose of raging at the sky. Even though it was patchworked with clumps of algae from the lake, the sculpture was clearly crusted entirely with faceted rubies.

"Whoa," Bobby commented. "What d'ya think it is?"

"I think it's a gazillion-dollar ticket to the easy life," Eric answered, the dollar signs almost visibly flashing in his eyes as he blatantly assessed the object by its value alone.

"You think so, huh?" Hank countered coolly. "Personally, I think it's the thing Dungeon Master sent us looking for."

"Huh?" Eric asked, seeming to snap out of a daze with a shake of his head. Scrutinizing the sculpted dragon a little more closely, he mused, "Hm ... stones of flame ...? Yeah, I guess it could be, couldn't it?"

"I think so, too," Diana said with her usual enthusiasm. "What did Dungeon Master tell us about it? You said it just now, didn't you? Something about stones of flame?"

"_A sleeping fury will soon wake and gaze upon the Realm through stones of flame_," Eric immediately quoted, sounding uncannily like their mysterious guide at that moment. "_Should those who have sought the stones for an age discover what they desire, the red fury will be fanned a thousandfold. Seek not to quench the fire once it has begun, but instead, prevent it from ever igniting_."

"Stones of flame, I guess that describes rubies pretty well," Sheila agreed when Eric had finished his recitation.

"Yeah," Presto agreed, noting the way the gemstones shone in the suns-light as if the little statue was on fire. Remembering a previous encounter while the gang had hitched a ride on the back of a surprisingly compliant roc, he added, "And red dragons, those are, like, the fire-breathers, and pretty nasty-tempered, too, so, um, yeah." While that tidbit of information added a few interesting pieces to the puzzle, the original question remained unanswered. "Uh, like Bobby said, what do you think it is?"

"I don't know," Hank admitted thoughtfully, "but did anyone else notice that those guys who attacked us were wearing armor that looked like red dragon scales?"

"Great!" Eric answered, throwing his hands into the air with patently false cheer. "A bunch of dragon fanatics out to score the super-rare red toy from the McDragon's Happy Meal!"

"Cute, Eric," Hank sighed in response. "What I was going to say was that they were probably the ones Dungeon Master said were looking for this thing too. He didn't make it sound like they were up to any good, so whatever else we do, we shouldn't let them get their hands on it."

"But what are we supposed to do with it?" Bobby asked, voicing one of the many questions that Dungeon Master had, as usual, left unanswered. "Is it gonna help us get home or what?"

"Um," Eric hedged, pausing to stare off into nothing as his lips moved slightly, silently reciting to himself everything that their guide had told them on the subject. "Actually," he added a moment later, "Ol' DM didn't say anything about that this time."

"Okay, so, like, why are we gonna do this?" the stubborn Barbarian asked in response to the unsatisfactory answer.

"Because we can probably sell this thing for a boatload of cash when we're done!" Eric replied cheerfully, trying to snatch the priceless treasure from Diana's hands.

Eric's attempt at larceny was stopped cold by one of the Acrobat's magnificent scowls. "Maybe we should start by figuring out if this thingy's supposed to do something," she suggested. Holding the statue up to the suns-light, she looked for all the world like she was searching for operating instructions or a battery compartment.

"Well, since His Shortness didn't give us much of a hint," Eric reasoned, also staring at the statue with a calculating expression, "and it looks like it doesn't come with a user's manual, maybe we're going to have to find someone who can I.D. it for us, or at least tell us what it's worth."

"If we get back on the road and keep going the way we were going, we're bound to run into a town at some point," their leader agreed. "It's a pretty well-traveled road, so I'm sure we'll find somebody. That is, if you feel up to some walking, Presto?"

Gingerly flexing his injured arm, Presto took careful stock of how badly it throbbed with each movement. It hurt, sure, but it was probably going to hurt just as much whether he was sitting here resting or trudging down the road. And setting out on a search to find someone to tell them about the statue was a far less embarrassing prospect than having one of his friends decide to ask him to identify it by magical means. "Um, as long as we take it easy and we don't, you know, get into any more fights or anything, I think I'll be okay," he answered after careful consideration. "But walking that far in wet robes, now that's not gonna be any fun."

"At least you're not wearing drenched furs," Diana ribbed immediately, cheerfully reminding the Magician that he was not the only one who had gotten soaked in the lake. "Nothing like running around, smelling like a wet dog for the next hour or two."

"Well, still," Sheila began, and Presto mentally sighed and prepared himself for the next round of humiliating fussing. "Like I said, I think you should get your arm in a sling or something, just to give it a rest and remind you not to swing it while we're walking. Does anyone have a …?" The Thief trailed off, looking around quickly, but apparently did not find what she was looking for. Then, her face brightened when her eyes fell back on Presto. "Your sash. That'll make the perfect sling. Here, give it to me."

Quietly, obediently, knowing there was just no way out of this while Nurse Sheila was on duty, Presto unwound the sash from his waist and handed it over. Trying but failing to disguise his wounded dignity, Presto soon found himself trussed up like a roasted turkey. True, it did offer his aching arm a little relief, and he knew he'd come to appreciate it more as they traveled. On the other hand, now his robes were not only wet, but lacking anything to control their billowing fullness when they finally dried.

How was it that despite the fact that he'd just saved all his friends in the battle and had, in a roundabout way, helped find the object they'd been looking for, he still ended up feeling like a dork?

O.O.O

"So, guys, what do you think?" Hank asked when the group finally came to a halt. It was ten miles and several hours after the battle at the lake.

"Nice," Eric assessed as they stared up at the gates of the small city situated along a wide and raging river. The walls surrounding the settlement were made of block granite, not terribly elaborate, but clearly well cared for and even carved with careful decorations in places. What little could be seen of the roofs over the walls indicated cheerfully-painted buildings constructed of milled lumber, with high, shuttered windows. Somehow, it had the feeling of a quaint Bavarian town often pictured in brochures promoting an Oktoberfest celebration. "Looks like a pretty well-to-do place."

"Okay, if they're rich here, then remember," Diana advised with a completely deadpan expression, "pillage first, _then_ burn."

"Cool!" Bobby crowed eagerly.

"She's _joking_," Hank sighed, without even turning around to see the grin of anticipation spreading across Bobby's face. "We're just here to find a jeweler or historian who might be able to tell us what the dragon statue is. Okay?"

"Okay," the Barbarian answered glumly, his face falling. He already sounded bored with the task.

Presto stifled a laugh, knowing that it would make him cough again. Aside from a slightly irritated throat, he felt fine after his dip in the lake, but he'd quickly learned that one single cough would send Sheila into a tailspin of fussing and everyone else into another round of not-quite-disguised worrying. Instead, he simply added, "Or maybe we can find a really powerful Wizard or, you know, like an arcane scholar or something. I kinda think that thing might have some sorta magical power." In fact, Presto was fairly certain of that, and the thought made him mentally deride himself yet again for not being a good enough Magician to tell what power it was.

"Or we find a Wizard," Hank conceded. "But let's stick together. No use splitting up into groups to find someone who can identify a statue, when we only have one statue to show them. Okay, everyone?"

Diana paused to make sure that the priceless statue was securely wrapped and hidden from curious eyes in the giant leaf they had picked from a plant that grew wild along the roadside. Otherwise, the rest of the group answered their leader with some variant of "Okay," or "I'm ready, let's go."

Hank stepped forward, pounding loudly on the gate to get the gatekeeper's attention.

_End Chapter 1_


	2. Recursion

**Stones of Flame**

Chapter 2: Recursion

O.O.O

The town, they quickly learned, was called Kadath. The name alone had sent the geeky Presto sailing into Nerdvana. However, no matter how many times he tried to explain the literary significance, apparently none of his friends had ever read a word of H.P. Lovecraft, so eventually he gave it up as a lost cause.

Once they had satisfied the gruff and suspicious gatekeeper's questions as to their peaceful intentions, the kids had been allowed in the town with no further hassle. The people here were generally friendly, though most of them were unable to help with the gang's specific question. After a few polite inquiries, they earned directions to the town's jeweler, who stared at the statue with admiration and more than a little lust.

Unfortunately he knew nothing about it beyond the estimated value of the fine rubies. He did offer to purchase it for what sounded like a mighty sum, but after Presto gave Eric a warning kick to the shin (bruising his toe on the Cavalier's metal greave in the process,) the gang left the jeweler's shop with the statue and no more information than they had when they'd walked in.

They had a similar lack of success with a local scribe, who dutifully searched through reams of ancient parchment, but found no reference to either a ruby dragon statuette or, at Eric's request, any sort of "road ghoul" that might have ever haunted the area.

On the other hand, an elderly scholar named Kuranes, a likeable old man who could have been either an astronomer or possibly an astrologer based on his vague introduction of himself, stared in horror when Diana unwrapped the statue and placed it on his cluttered work table.

"Does anyone else know you have that?" he demanded sharply, after a long and dreadful silence.

"Sure, a few people," the Acrobat answered uneasily. "The gatekeeper, the scribe, a jeweler, a couple people we asked on the street ..."

"Then get it out of this town as quickly as possible," the scholar told them in no uncertain terms. "If this is found by the wrong people ..."

"Wait, does this have anything to do with a road ghoul?" Eric interrupted bluntly. "'Cause I don't get what a ghoul has to do with a red dragon statue."

The old man gave the Cavalier a withering look. "Not a road ghoul, you ignorant child! This is a totem used by the initiates of the Cult of Rogull!"

"Rogull being ..?" Hank prompted when the nervous scholar stopped to look hurriedly out the window.

Based on the appearance of the statue alone, Presto had the horrible suspicion that he already knew the answer, but he remained apprehensively silent and let the old scholar speak.

"Rogull is a mighty red dragon," Kuranes answered, with a strange and haunted expression in his eyes. "Spawn of Tiamat the Queen herself. Of all the evil dragons in the world, he may be second in power only to she who hatched him. It's said he slumbers for untold eons in an ancient bower of stone, but when the stars and the planets are aligned, he will rise and fly forth on our world, leaving chaos and destruction in his wake."

"When the stars are right ..." Presto muttered to himself. What was with the Lovecraftian parallels all of the sudden? Reminding himself to keep quiet, he tried to concentrate on the situation at hand, knowing that he was the only one who had read enough to think that this was just a little weird.

"And you're saying there's a cult of people who follow him?" Hank asked incredulously. "People who, what, worship him or something? Like they _want_ him to come back and destroy the world?"

"Madness, I know!" the scholar exclaimed, apparently just as baffled by the concept as the Ranger was. "But I've seen them, or people like them. Even the darkest force of ultimate destruction has its loyal followers, and this cult has waited for generations to answer his call!"

"_Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn_," Presto intoned, completely not realizing that he was speaking aloud. Seconds later, he finally noticed that an uncomfortable silence had fallen in the room, and he looked up from the statue sheepishly. Everyone was blankly staring at him with varying levels of incomprehension. "Um, nothing," he said with an embarrassed wave of his hand, his cheeks burning brightly. Seriously, had _no one_ but him ever read_ The Call of Cthulhu_? Clearing his throat loudly, which caused Sheila's stare to change from confusion to concern, he added, "But I, uh, I think we've already kinda met some of the cultist followers, right guys?"

"He's right," Diana agreed. "There were these guys in red scale armor that attacked us right before I found the statue. One of them said that ROGULL wouldn't answer to us." This last sentence was coupled with a pointed glance in the Cavalier's direction.

"Hey, Rogull, road ghoul, whatever," Eric answered with an easy shrug. "There was a battle going on right next to my ear. I'm allowed to get one wrong every thousand times or so."

"This, uh, totem thingy," Presto said quickly, feeling that he needed to haul the conversation back on its tracks. He tried to indicate the statue, grimaced, and then repeated the gesture using his uninjured arm. "Is it supposed to wake up the dragon or something?"

"Not exactly," the old man admitted, pulling at his white beard nervously. "Rogull will wake when he wakes. I doubt he, or any dragon, would be at the beck and call of a mere Human. What will happen is that his cult followers will use this to call to him, through a spell to empower it somehow." Pointing to the twin chips of faceted emeralds adorning the dragon's face, twin green stones that flamed as brightly as their red counterparts, he hazarded, "My understanding is, the spell will allow him to see through the eyes of the statue to know where they are."

"But why would they want to do that?" Sheila asked in clear confusion. "Rogull is a dragon! A_ red dragon!_ Who would want to go around trying to attract his attention on purpose?"

"Dragons," the scholar explained with a slightly impatient sigh, "have a great deal of power, no matter what hue they are. And wealth. And knowledge. I'd wager that some time, centuries ago, for whatever reason, Rogull rewarded some human with some part of his hoard. This is only my guess, but that may have been what first formed the cult: people who expect to receive some sort of reward when Rogull wakes and learns of their undying loyalty."

"The only 'reward' they're going to get from a red dragon is the privilege of being eaten first," Diana commented, shaking her head at the assumed naivete of the dragon's cult. "If he's been sleeping for generations -"

_For strange eons,_ Presto thought hard, but kept his mouth shut since his friends clearly had no appreciation for the works of The Man of Providence.

"-then he's going to wake up hungry," Diana continued. "A group of humans jumping up and down, shouting 'Here I am!' is going to look like a tasty snack to him."

"You realize that, and I realize that, young lady," Kuranes agreed, picking up the statue to examine it more closely. "I'd excuse their ignorance if they had a more noble cause, such as hoping the dragon might help defeat Venger. But I can assure you, that's not the case."

"There's a lot more efficient ways to get at Venger than by waiting thousands of years for a dragon to decide to wake up," Hank agreed. "Besides, if Tiamat can't do it, chances are this Rogull couldn't, either."

"Which is why I say they have less than admirable designs," the scholar nodded, "and not a brain in their heads."

Something about Kuranes's answer made the Ranger give a sudden start. "Wait ..." he said, leveling the old man with a piercing look. "Just how do you know all this, anyway?"

Again, the agitated old man twisted his white beard uneasily. "Er ... youthful indiscretions," he finally admitted. "Rest assured, I've long since come to my senses when I realized exactly what those less than admirable designs were. Do you really think I'd want them to use this statue to draw the attention of an angry dragon who will burn the very world I live in to ashes?"

"So, then, what do we do with it?" Presto asked, finally voicing the one question they'd wanted answered all along. "The statue thingy, I mean."

"Shatter it!" the old man answered with no hint of hesitation whatsoever. "The stars and the planets are almost right, that much I can tell you for sure. The Cult has likely been searching for this for months, if not years. Destroy it so they can't use it! Smash the eye-gems so Rogull will never see out of them again, then break the statue and put the pieces it in a place where no one will ever find them! Magic items won't work right once they're broken, but I don't want the Cult even getting their hands on the shards!"

"_Should those who have sought the stones for an age discover what they desire, the red fury will be fanned a thousandfold,_" the Cavalier mumbled quietly. "_Seek not to quench the fire once it has begun, but instead, prevent it from ever igniting_. Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. We can't kill a red dragon, we're just supposed to stop the guys who want to bring him here in the first place."

"Right," Hank agreed. "So let's do like the man says, and get this thing out of here so we can destroy it. Quietly. I don't think those guys who attacked us knew where it was, otherwise they would have used it if they'd already had their hands on it. They're probably still looking for it and chances are they think we have it."

"Okay, well, thanks," Presto said to the old scholar, while glancing over his shoulder to keep an extra eye on Bobby. He'd just noticed that the youngest member of their group had wandered off to start tinkering with some of the more unusual-looking devices lining the numerous shelves. How could the Barbarian possibly have gotten bored with an exciting story like the one he'd just heard? "Maybe we should, uh … Bobby, you seriously don't want to mess with something like that!"

"Okay, okay, fine," the little Barbarian muttered, setting a bizarre device with lots of cogs and wheels back onto the shelf where he had found it. "We gonna get going now?"

"Sheesh, haven't you been listening?" Presto sighed, rolling his eyes. Hank and Eric were both politely shaking hands with Kuranes to thank him; it was obvious that they were done here. Pushing open the front door to the combination home and laboratory, he gestured for Bobby to put some spring in his step and follow him out into the street. "Honestly, paying attention every now and then isn't such a bad-"

Presto never had the chance to finish the thought. A flash of red in the corner of his vision was the only warning he had before something hit him hard into the solar plexus. Slammed backwards against the wall, he sagged into unconsciousness, the breath completely knocked out of him.

O.O.O

"Presto! Presto, wake up!"

Groggily, Presto heard one of the girls – he thought it was Sheila - desperately screaming his name over a constant roaring sound in his ears, and he struggled mightily towards consciousness. He almost got there, but had a feeling that he might have faded out again. When he finally came to, he was completely disoriented, and the images that greeted his starry vision made no sense.

He was in the middle of a war zone. His friends, as well as unfamiliar townspeople, were running frantically in the streets, struggling mightily against strange men dressed in red who seemed vaguely familiar. Abstractly, the Magician knew there was screaming and roaring and terror all around. Something bad must have happened while he was out, but he couldn't comprehend what it was.

Trying to sit up, Presto felt his head swim. What had hit him? It was nearly impossible to draw a breath; it felt like something was sitting on his crushed and aching chest. All he was able to do was lay there limply, until he found the energy to concentrate on his surroundings.

Men in red, running everywhere, swinging blunt weapons – where had he seen them before? Wait … after a slow, uncomprehending moment, he remembered the lake … it was the men in red scale armor who had attacked them at the lake! Their heads were wrapped in bandages now, but it was definitely them. Shaking his head, the Magician blearily realized these dragon-cult members must have regrouped themselves after their aborted attack at the lake, quickly cared for the burns he had inflicted, and followed them here. They had come for the statue and …

And...

And the town was burning. Presto finally recognized the sounds and smells of an inferno surrounding him. Smoke was pouring into the streets; it was bad enough that he couldn't catch his breath from the blow to his solar plexus, but now the fumes threatened to overwhelm him completely. He coughed desperately, tears stinging his eyes.

A horrible, mind-rending roar above his head made the Magician look up in abject terror, and finally, the pieces all came together so that he could comprehend what was happening. Fire rained down on the town from a gigantic, looming shadow streaking through the sky.

A dragon. A red dragon. Rogull. The great beast was here. The cult members must have gotten the statue away from his friends and cast the spell to pinpoint the dragon's attention on Kadath.

Just how long had he been out?

"Presto! Come on, Presto! Get up!"

That had sounded like Hank, but the Ranger's voice had sounded eerily far away, as if spoken through a long, dark tunnel. Though he desperately wanted to obey their leader's simple command to rise, all he could do was turn his head to the side to witness the terror, the burning, the utter destruction of the dragon and his cult followers. Through the billowing smoke, he could see several red-mailed men lashing with cudgels at a crowd of screaming townspeople, who trampled their own neighbors in their panicked rush.

Sickened as he was, Presto felt too weak to tear his eyes away from the carnage. Several crushed and broken bodies lay dying in the wake of the human stampede, and …

... Bobby ...

Shocked, the Magician suddenly found the strength to snap his head up and state in mute denial. No, he couldn't be seeing this! Among the broken bodies lying in the street was a smaller shape that looked just like Bobby!

The horror knotting in Presto's guts turned the sounds of destruction all around him into a tiny background noise as he stared blankly. There was no mistake, it was Bobby! The kid must have had been caught up in the panicked throng, and now … he must have slipped and fallen in the crowd ...

Gulping ineffectually for air, Presto turned his head away quickly, but he did not close his eyes fast enough. Half a block away, he beheld an even more horrible sight through the thick smoke and desperate panic. Lying limp and still in the middle of the street, horrendously disfigured by the fires of the red dragon who soared overhead, was another body that was unmistakably Diana.

No ...

Immediately, Presto's stomach violently emptied itself onto the cobblestones. This couldn't be! None of this could be happening, not to his friends! He had to stop the dragon somehow, but it was already too late for at least two of the people that were dearest to him!

"Presto! Can you hear me? Don't do this to us, buddy! Wake up!"

That unquestionably scared voice had belonged to Eric, Presto was sure. And indeed, Presto very desperately _wanted_ to get up and help, to cast some spell and chase away the dragon as he had done in Helix, but he could barely even move. He couldn't see through the tears burning his eyes. Everything hurt so much; his chest had been hit so hard that he was sure he had broken ribs, and his friends ... Diana, and Bobby … It was too much. He couldn't take this horror. The only solace he thought he could find would be to simply close his eyes, and wait for the fire and the smoke and the dragon and the cultists to overcome him.

There was a sound that the Magician only barely identified as the sloshing of water, probably someone trying to put out the fire, before a slap of cold wetness brutally soaked his entire body. Presto vaguely managed a weak gasp, but his aching body couldn't take the shock. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he knew no more.

O.O.O

"Presto! Come on, Presto! Get up!"

That had sounded like Hank, but the Ranger's voice had sounded eerily far away, as if spoken through a long, dark tunnel.

"Presto! Can you hear me? Don't do this to us, buddy! Wake up!"

That unquestionably scared voice had belonged to Eric, Presto was sure. And indeed, Presto very desperately _wanted_ to get up and help, to cast some spell and chase away the dragon as he had done in Helix, but he could barely even move. He couldn't see through the tears burning his eyes. Everything hurt so much; his chest had been hit so hard that he was sure he had broken ribs.

"Come on, Presto, we're not gonna let you go without a fight!"

Diana?

Groggy, disoriented, the Magician tried to focus on that last voice. That had been Diana! But she … wasn't she ...? Hadn't the dragon ...? But that was her voice! He must have been mistaken! She was all right after all! Confused but elated, he tried to open his eyes, but his aching, throbbing chest still felt like something was sitting on it and hammering him repeatedly with rib-shattering blows. Breathing was still impossible. Or was it? Presto thought he felt his lungs inflating, but he was sure that he hadn't the strength to accomplish even that much.

"Hank, you're getting tired! Switch with Eric!"

Wha-? What in the world had Sheila meant by that? Still too dazed to put any definition to the Thief's words, Presto vaguely realized that the slamming in his chest stopped, and the solid weight pushing him into the ground lifted. Barely two seconds passed, though, before the weight straddled him again and the bone-cracking pounding began anew.

Weakly, Presto drew a breath. Or had he? Then, suddenly, hacking and sputtering violently, the Magician finally found the strength to suck in a deep, full gasp of air.

"He's all right!"

"Presto! Take it easy! You okay?"

"Oh, geez, Presto, you scared the crap out of us!"

All of his friends were talking at once, but all Presto could do was turn his head to the side, choking and gagging up what felt like half an ocean of water. Distantly aware that he was soaked, the Magician vaguely wondered if maybe he had inhaled some of the fire-extinguishing water that had been thrown on him by accident.

"Presto? Can you hear me?"

Not quite finding the strength to answer Sheila just yet, the Magician put forth his mightiest effort into just opening his eyes when his coughing finally subsided.

The first thing he noticed was that everything was a giant blur. He'd lost his glasses again, then. But after several seconds of disoriented squinting through that relentless haze, Presto finally focused enough to realize that the heavy weight on his chest was because the blur of primary colors that was Eric was straddling him.

"Wha … wha happ'n?" Presto summoned the energy to mumble, then blinked in shock as his astigmatic eyes turned towards the wide expanse of azure sky. And nothing but sky. Where were the looming shadows that should have been buildings? Where was the black haze of smoke? Where was the dancing red lights of fire? Where was the entire town? "Di ... Dianazokay? Wherz … wherza drag'n?" he managed blearily.

"What? Diana? She's right here, Presto. But ... a dragon?" Eric asked with clear concern in his voice as he finally got up off the Magician's chest.

"I think he's delirious," Sheila answered from right next to Presto's head, causing him to blink and change what little focus he could muster. Green. Everything around the Thief was green. Green grass, green trees … they weren't in the town at all, but the middle of a forest!

"Wh … where're we?" the Magician managed through a raw and burning throat that tasted distinctly of vomit. Nothing made any sense. Trying to sit up, he was thwarted when the arm he used to support himself burst into an explosion of white-hot pain.

"Take it easy, Presto. Don't you remember?" Sheila asked in clear concern. "We were all just walking by the lake when those guys ambushed us a few minutes ago."

A few minutes ago? Didn't Sheila mean several hours ago? After the Hat had set their attackers' hair on fire, they'd walked half the day away until they reached Kadath, then spent at least another hour in the town looking for someone to tell them about the statue.

Hadn't they? If they hadn't, then … what?

"A few … uh … wait, I don't ... um, then, then what happened?" Presto asked in trepidation. Somehow, he felt that he might not want to know the answer, a feeling that only intensified as an uneasy silence fell over his friends. Though his vision was too fuzzy to read their expressions as they glanced at one another, Presto knew the others well enough that he did not need to see the looks on their faces to know that something was very wrong. "Guys?" he asked nervously.

"Well," Eric finally volunteered, though he drawled out the word hesitantly. "You, uh, you got knocked in the lake, and, well, you _drowned_, buddy."

"I WHAT?" Presto yelped, unfortunately sending himself into another fit of furious coughing.

"Easy! Easy!" Hank said quickly, reaching out a hand to steady the choking Magician. "You're all right now, okay? I didn't see what happened, but Diana said it looked like one of them hit you with a mace or something, and you fell into the lake. She and I dove in as soon as we could and pulled you out when you didn't come up on your own."

"And it's a good thing that Sheila knows CPR," Eric added with honest gratitude in his voice. "She and Diana were giving you mouth-to-mouth while she had me and Hank switching off doing the chest compression thing. Looks like it worked, huh?"

"I, uh, yeah," Presto stammered. Were it not for the splitting headache coalescing behind his eyes, his mind would have been racing right then. The experience in Kadath hadn't happened. He. Had. Drowned. If not for the quick actions of his friends, he would be dead right now. Still confused, Presto mentally grasped all the pieces he could find and tried to puzzle them into a picture of what had happened once he fell into the lake. "What about those ... uh, the cult guys?"

Presto sensed, rather than saw, the slightly guilty expression that flitted briefly over Hank's features, but the Cavalier just gave a slight laugh in the Ranger's direction. "Well, let's just say that Hank did those guys a big favor by curing any head lice problems they had."

Startled, Presto blinked several times in confusion. "Wait. You … shot them? Like, lit their hair on fire or something?" But that wasn't how it happened at all! The Hat had been what set their attackers aflame, not the Bow! Or ... hadn't it? Suddenly, Presto wasn't certain of anything any more.

"Well, I know it was pretty close to deadly force, but desperate times, desperate measures," the Ranger answered, a nonchalant shrug carrying in the tone of his voice. Obviously, their leader wasn't too upset about his underhanded tactic. "It was either let you drown while we kept fighting all nice and fair, or play dirty to get those guys out of the picture fast so we could save you."

"You … shot them," Presto repeated weakly. None of this was right! "I didn't ..? I mean, I couldn't have, because, I was ... Well, I kinda thought maybe the Hat did something, didn't it?"

"Presto, you were … underwater," Diana explained uncomfortably. "You couldn't have done anything. Your Hat was floating away, but I managed to grab it when we untangled you from whatever it was that you were snagged on." Picking up a sad, soggy blob from the grass nearby, she displayed a dripping green blur that Presto realized must have been the Hat in question. "I think maybe you were hallucinating 'cause you ran out of air, or maybe you somehow caught a glimpse of the guys when Hank set them on fire and, I dunno, you were already so disoriented that you thought you did it."

"Oh," was all the befuddled Magician could reply. "Well, um, so are they gone?"

"We think so. Hang on a sec, okay?" Hank asked, then turned his attention somewhere out of Presto's line of sight. "Hey, Bobby? Any sign of them coming back?"

"Nope. At least, Uni doesn't think so," the little Barbarian answered from closer to the tree line.

Presto noted with relief that the kid actually sounded disappointed that he wasn't going to get to bust any heads today. The mere sound of Bobby's voice reassured Presto that he, like Diana, had not been hurt after all.

"Ya want me to go after them or something?" the boy offered, exactly as Presto had known he would.

"Bobby! Don't you dare!" interrupted Sheila. "I'll go. I thought I heard them getting on horses or something, and riding away, but I'll follow their trail and make sure. I mean, Presto, are you feeling okay enough for me to go?"

"Yeah," Presto sighed, flopping his uninjured arm over his face to shield his throbbing head from the unyielding light of the suns. "I … I'm all right, I guess."

There was a long pause, and Presto didn't even have to look to know that Sheila was giving him a sharp, mulish glare that said she wasn't going to accept a show of bravado as a reply. But she must eventually have decided that he wasn't going to curl up and pass out on her right then and there, for finally she instructed the others, "See what you guys can do about getting him cleaned up and dried off. I'll be back in a few minutes." Then he heard her get to her feet and tread quietly towards the trees.

Presto sighed. His head was killing him. His lungs were killing him. His arm was killing him. His guts were killing him because apparently, vigorous CPR often made the recipient involuntarily throw up. And his jumbled thoughts hurt worse than all the rest put together. Why was nothing making sense? What had happened to him in the lake? How much of it had been hallucination, and how much of it had been vague, misinterpreted impressions of his friends trying to save him?

"Hey," Eric's concerned voice asked, thankfully offering a proverbial lifeline in the midst of the Magician's mental tumult. "I'm gonna say it again, are you okay, buddy?"

"Um, no, not really," Presto answered, though he knew he could never explain why. Swallowing down the spiral of panic that had been coiling in the back of his throat, the Magician quickly organized his thoughts long enough to come up with a reasonable answer that wouldn't make his friends think he'd completely lost his marbles. Finally, he opened his eyes and pointed out the obvious, which none of his friends had realized in the midst of their greater concerns. "I, uh ... I kinda lost my glasses in the lake."

"Wha - ? Oh, yeah, I guess you did," Eric replied lamely.

"Don't worry about it, I can find them, no sweat," Diana volunteered immediately. "The water's maybe only a couple yards deep, and it looks like the bottom's more rock than mud." Climbing quickly to her feet, she added, "They can't have gone too far," before lightly springing into the water and slipping easily beneath the surface.

Presto sighed, drawing his knees up to his chest as he sat up, accepting his friends' assurances that Diana would be back with his glasses any moment. Under normal circumstances, the loss of his glasses would have sent him into a complete panic, but he'd been so freaked out by his hallucination, or disorientation, whatever it was called, that he never found the energy to be more than mildly concerned. Already, he'd had such a fright that at this point, whatever fear the loss of his glasses represented didn't really didn't add that much to the grand total.

However, the surreal trepidation only grew deeper as he sat, quietly waiting for Diana to find his glasses. And something else. The longer she was down there, the more certain he was that she would break the surface with the excited news that she had found something else. In the mean time, he listened with a disconcerting sense of déjà vu as Hank and Eric discussed their attackers and what the men had said, including a disturbingly familiar comment about a "road ghoul."

Sheila had returned from her invisible tracking foray to report that their attackers had ridden off by the time Diana finally emerged from the lake, doubly victorious. A pair of glasses were in one hand, and to the surprise of everyone except Presto, an algae-covered but magnificent statuette of a bejeweled red dragon was in the Acrobat's other hand.

There was much "oohing" and "aahing" over the statue, and a discussion of what to do with it, while Presto quietly submitted to having first aid inflicted on him when Sheila realized his arm had been injured in the attack as well.

The others had fitted the statue to Dungeon Master's riddle by the time Sheila had taken Presto's sash for a sling and trussed his injured arm up like a roast turkey. There was some debate over what to do with the glittering treasure, before it was eventually decided that the group should hit the road to the nearest town and try to find someone who could tell them its purpose.

"That is," Hank added, turning to the injured Magician, "if you feel up to some walking, Presto?"

Presto froze. Hallucination or not, in that second, everything he thought they'd experienced in Kadath flashed rapidly before his eyes. If they went to the nearest population center, the Cult of Rogull would surely follow them. They'd find the statue, and would use it. Then the dragon would come. The town would be destroyed in the red's rage, and the townsfolk and some, if not all, of his friends would perish in the conflagration. This was crystal clear and real, Presto just knew it. He wasn't crazy. And here was the one chance, the tiny decision, that could change everything, even if trying to explain himself would make him look like the biggest nutter in the Realm.

"I, uh, actually," the Magician stammered, looking embarrassed, "no, not really."

"Seriously?" Eric asked, the slight surprise in his voice quickly morphing into the familiar snarkiness that he used to make light of almost anything. "Aw, gimme a break, Presto! It's just your arm, and last time I checked, you don't need your arm to walk."

"I, um ..." Presto began uncertainly. Though he was certain that some unknown force had warned him not to go to Kadath, not right now, with those cultists so hot on their heels, he had no clue how to convince his friends it was a bad idea. Aside from the fact that his story was probably too far-fetched to believe, it was a basic problem with always letting the Cavalier walk all over him: He didn't quite know how to stand up for himself when it really counted.

"We are _absolutely not _going anywhere right now!" a firm voice that would brook no argument informed them all, and Presto was slightly startled – though quite grateful - to realize it was Sheila who had just backed him up. "Presto's arm is probably going to be fine, but you guys realize what just happened, right? He _drowned_," she said with an emphatic gesture towards the lake. "He may have some cracked ribs from the CPR, and don't any of you know that people who inhale that much water can develop pneumonia or a lung infection? Lots of rescued drowning victims end up dying two or three days later because … um ..." Here, the Thief paused, looked highly flustered, and stammered out an embarrassed apology. "I … I mean, I'm sorry, Presto, I didn't … I shouldn't have blurted that out like that in front of you like that."

"'S okay," the Magician answered feebly, though he had gone very, very pale at the revelation.

"Well, I for one didn't know any of that, but that settles it," Hank said with the finality of the leader that he was. "We're not going anywhere until Presto's had some time to recuperate. Diana, we need a safe place to stay for a couple days, so you go up the river a ways, and I'll scout into the trees and we'll see what we can find. Eric, you and Bobby and Uni set up watch to make sure those guys don't circle around and come back. Presto, you just take it easy, and Sheila, I want you to keep an eye on him until we get back. Everyone got it?"

There came a chorus of murmured assents and, thus assigned, everyone quickly sprang to their appointed tasks. Presto's task, of course, was the simplest of all. He simply sat down and leaned against a tree, relaxing, at least physically, as per orders. He sighed, gingerly rubbing his aching shoulder, then his aching head. Resting here for a couple days would be enough, of that he was certain. Those men in red armor wouldn't come back. Once they had tended to their burns, they would resume their search, traveling to the nearest city where they assumed something of such great value would be taken by its ignorant discoverers. And, not finding it there, they would continue on, desperate to pick up a trail that didn't exist.

Presto's thoughts were interrupted by Sheila, who had rather forcibly commandeered Eric's cape. Folding it into a pillow, she carefully tucked it under Presto's elbow to give his injured arm a place to rest. "Thanks," he smiled awkwardly at the Thief turned Nurse.

"No problem," she answered simply.

It occurred to Presto that Sheila could only assume that he was thanking her for the first aid care. She would have no way of knowing that his thanks were really for her firm insistence that they should stay here for a day or two, saving him from an awkward, lengthy explanation that would probably just be dismissed as a dream. This had to be a first. For once, he'd saved the day and, miraculously, hadn't ended up feeling like a dork.

O.O.O

Two uneventful days had passed in the shelter of a deeply overhanging rock in the woods before Sheila had finally pronounced Presto well enough to travel. Their journey along ten or so miles of well-traveled road was quiet, interrupted only by the friendly greetings of a few groups of travelers heading in the opposite direction.

The town they encountered was not named after H.P. Lovecraft's _The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath_, though in all other details, Presto realized with a growing sense of dread that it was essentially the same as his vision. Over the past couple of days, after the shock of his drowning had worn off, his reason had come back, and he'd put quite an effort into explaining away his entire experience as nothing of any importance after all. For the most part, he'd convinced himself that his Lovecraft-soaked subconscious had used the name "Kadath" simply to tell him it was a dream all along. But standing in front of the gated city now, Presto could no longer accept that as the case. Everything before his eyes was too precise to shrug off as mere coincidence.

To the mild wonder of his friends, a suddenly energized Presto essentially took charge when they arrived at the Bavarian-esque settlement. As soon as they had passed through the gatekeeper's scrutiny, he insisted that they go directly to the town's wisest scholar rather than wasting time seeking out scribes and jewelers. In fact, he practically led his friends straight to the scholar's house with barely a question put to any passers-by.

The scholar's reaction to the statue came as little surprise to Presto, though he tried to feign a bit of amazement to match his friends' more honest responses to the familiar tale of the Cult of Rogull. It was also of little surprise to him when the scholar, a man named Eideard, informed them that a band of heavily bandaged men matching the description of the Cult had been through the town not two days before, searching in vain for a statue fitting this description. Apparently unsuccessful, they had given up and hurried away down the road, empty-handed.

It was of little surprise, and yet, it was a great shock. It meant that if he hadn't taken the warning for what it was, then what Presto had almost dismissed as his own little dream quest would have come to pass.

O.O.O

It was probably midnight, and Presto sat awake in the candlelight with Hank, Eric, and Diana, the four of them barely speaking. Bobby was flopped out on one of the beds, fast asleep. Uni was draped across his shins, relaxed but awake and watching the proceedings quietly. Sheila was conspicuously absent.

After they had consulted with the scholar earlier that day, Presto had been absolutely certain how to fulfill Dungeon's Master's injunction to keep the flames from burning more. "Pry the eyes out," he instructed. "Then Bobby, you crush them into powder. If the dragon can't see through them, his followers can't let him know where they are."

Eric, of course, had taken it one step further, and had pried a dozen rubies off the statue while the Barbarian's Club had turned the two green gems into so much glittery dust. Those rubies, the Cavalier sold to a local jeweler for what turned out to be quite a mighty sum, and it was a small portion of that gold that the kids had used to rent three rooms in the local inn for the night.

Eric finally broke the silence with a testy, "Why isn't she back yet?"

"She hasn't been gone that long," Hank answered immediately, though this reply was coupled with an agitated glance in the direction of the room's door. "Give her a little more time."

"Yeah, I know," Eric replied petulantly, "but I'm tired, and I want to hit the hay. Thing is, you know I won't be able to sleep until this is over."

"How do you think I feel?" Hank sighed tersely. "All right, if Sheila's not back in half an hour, then we'll go looking for her, okay?"

Diana, in a voice pitched low enough to respect the late hour and the sleeping kid in the room, put down the Staff that she'd been absently polishing and asked, "Are we sure this is even going to work?"

"Positive," Presto answered, taking his cue to talk a little more softly. He wasn't worried about the Cult of Rogull finding them now, but along with Bobby, there were other lodgers in the building who slept well, never needing to hear how close the town had come to annihilation. "I'm pretty sure we broke it just by, you know, smashing the eyes." He twirled something red and glittery in his hands, a long, rounded piece of jeweled sculpture that resembled nothing so much as a coiled snake. "Magic items have to be complete or they just won't work right," he explained. "So even if they do find all the big pieces and cast their spell on it, it's been broken, so it won't talk to the dragon, like, ever again."

"Okay," Diana agreed hesitantly, distractedly going back to polishing her Staff for the third time tonight. "This just seems like a weird way of doing it."

In the silence that followed, Presto soon felt someone's eyes on him, studying him deliberately. Though it did not feel malicious, it still made him shiver imperceptibly, and he subtly glanced around at those of his friends who were awake. Diana was busy cleaning her already clean Staff, Eric was idly flicking his fingers through the candle flame while his expression was a million miles away, and Hank was staring at the door intently, as if willing Sheila to return quickly and safely. None of them were looking his direction, but, somehow, he could feel the gaze still on him like a physical thing.

Finally, glancing over at the bed, he noted that Bobby was still asleep, but it was Uni who watched him so closely, with a speculative look in her intelligent eyes. Her scrutiny was so intense that Presto actually squirmed. The Magician had no doubt that if the unicorn could speak, she would be asking him just how, exactly, he knew everything he claimed to know.

Not able to answer the silent question, Presto just grinned and shrugged innocently. Uni snorted softly at this, and finally put her head down, but she neither closed her eyes nor slept.

Fifteen minutes later, the softest of knocks sounded at the wooden door. Hank was up and unlatching the bolt before the others could even get to their feet. Opening the door wide, the Ranger made a show of looking up and down the empty hall, feigning confusion, and then saying, "There's no one here," just in case another lodger happened to be watching and wondering what why he opened the door for no apparent reason. As soon as had he closed the latch, though, a soft, violet glow lit up the room as it briefly outlined a human form. There stood Sheila just a moment later, and the tension lingering in the room vanished as quickly as she appeared.

"You made it," the Ranger said in clear relief. He almost started to hug the now-visible Thief, paused self-consciously, then settled for laying a hand on her petite shoulder. "Everything go okay?"

"Just fine," Sheila answered, squeezing Hank's fingers briefly and giving him a reassuring smile. "Nobody saw me. It was quiet as a church out there."

Presto, following an unspoken agreement he and the others had to quietly ignore any little displays of affection between certain individuals of their group, pretended he hadn't seen any of this happen and simply asked, "So what did you end up doing?"

"I went down to the river, the part where it looked really fast and deep," Sheila explained, pointing generally to the east. "I threw the head in there. Then I came back into town and poked around until I found the nastiest, smelliest, grossest latrine pit in this entire place." Making a slightly disgusted face, she continued, "I dumped the torso part down the outhouse, and if the cultists can get it out of there, they're welcome to it!"

"What about, you know, the arms and legs?" Presto asked, mentally accounting for every piece they had broken the statue into earlier that evening.

"What, the parts that Bobby smashed into powder?" Sheila asked. "I just tossed a pinch of it here and there as I went, like the little Dragon Dust Faerie!" Here, she mimicked reaching into a pouch on her belt and tossing glitter into the wind as she skipped along. "Tra, la la, la la!"

"Okay," Presto laughed, glad for the levity after the nerve-wracking wait for Sheila to return safely from her mission. "So, like, the tail," he said, producing the jeweled piece he'd been playing with earlier. "Tomorrow, or, um, maybe the next day, when we've walked far enough, we'll bury it in the middle of the forest somewhere, you know, as far from a road as we can get. And the wings ...well, there's never a handy volcano around when you need to throw something into one, huh? So, um, Hank? Skeet shooting tomorrow morning?"

"Sounds like fun," the Ranger agreed with a smile. "But it's getting late, and now that we're all back safe and sound, let's head to our own rooms and let Presto and Eric get some sleep. I'll get Bobby," he said, gathering up the soundly sleeping Barbarian, who never woke or gave an indication that he had noticed any of this. "Come on, Uni, I'm pretty sure Eric would rather you share room and board with us. Good night, guys. Good night, ladies."

There was a round of "Good nights" and "Sleep tights" exchanged, and Presto bolted the door after Hank took Bobby and Uni to the adjacent room they were sharing, while Diana and Sheila disappeared into their lodging across the hall. When the Magician turned around, Eric pointed at the bed closest to the window. "Dibs," he said immediately.

"Sure, no problem," Presto shrugged. A bed was a bed, even if it was the first bed he'd slept in for weeks, and it was all the same to him. Still, he couldn't resist a little jab as he peeled off his voluminous outer robe and got ready for sleep. "That's the one I told all the bedbugs they could have, anyway."

"Yeah, right," the Cavalier answered, though it was half lost in the effort of wrangling himself out of his chain mail. "Since when can you talk to bugs?"

"Since for always, I just never told you," the Magician deadpanned, sliding under the covers and just marveling in the modern wonder that was a mattress. Even if it was nothing more than a big, canvas sack stuffed with straw, he was finally sleeping on a _mattress_ again.

Much to Presto's amused delight, a moment later, he heard the unmistakable sound of sheets and blankets being vigorously shaken, while the ever-paranoid Eric muttered something under his breath about bugs and Magicians plotting against him. Finally, the Cavalier settled in for the night, tucking himself in and blowing out the single remaining candle.

"G'night, Presto, pleasant dreams," Eric mumbled, pulling the covers over his head as the room went as dark as three moons outside the open window would allow.

"Yeah, prophetic dreams, Eric," Presto answered evenly.

A minute of warm, peaceful silence stretched by in the night, marked only by a slight rumble that was the beginning of one of Eric's famous snores. Then, suddenly, the Cavalier gave an abrupt snort and sat up in the darkness. "Wait ..." he said in sleepy confusion, "what?"

Presto just smothered a grin, and pretended he was already asleep.

~Fin~


End file.
